The invitation only wine and specialty food tasting event dedicated to professional buyers, trade journalists and San Francisco Bay Area opinion leaders, is organized annually by WineCountry.IT, LLC. The goal of the trade show is to promote select quality Italian wines and food items produced by small and medium estates.

Italy, whose southern regions were known as Enotria, or 'Land of Wine' by the ancient Greeks, is home to over 300 native vines whose fruits are used to produce wine, making it the country with by far the greatest number of native grapes in the world. This fact is underscored by the fact that the country has close to 50,000 winery in an area which is 70% that of California. If you have ever driven down highway 29 from Napa to Calistoga and marveled at the number of winery lined up on both sides of the road, imagine that in Italy, most roads look like that, with wineries big and small scattered among vineyards and cultivated fields.

As usual, we created a 'tasting path' following what we consider the natural tasting progression, starting with sparkling wines suggested to be served as aperitifs, followed by white wines, blushes and sparkling Lambruscos, then red wines and closing with rare dessert wines.

Andrea Malagoli and Alessio Bompani, the young cousins representing the family estate, Azienda Agricola Garuti Elio at San Francisco's Italian Flavor Forum XII.

In addition to wines, the invited guests enjoyed three extra virgin olive oils from Tuscany and organic extra virgin olive oils from Apulia, plus balsamic condiments, balsamic vinegars from Modena, as well as wine and balsamic vinegar jellies from Azienda Agricola Garuti Elio from Sorbara, in the province of Modena.

Ron Hagan and Louise Gould check out the wines they will be pouring at their stations

The Buyers' Feedback

We asked our guests, who were sommeliers, professional buyers, journalists, and wine collectors, to please judge the products using the following 100-point scale.

95-100 = Excellent

90-94 = Very Good

80-89 = Good

70-79 = Average

50-69 = Not recommended

Elke Reinhardt gets ready to welcome guests at her tasting station

Despite the fact that the California-wine-trained palate of a very few guests does not allow them to appreciate some of the most unusual Italian wines presented, thus their scores are typically much lower than average –see for instance the minimum and maximum scores of Toscana 2004 IGT Occhini, Ravenna Rosso IGT Burson Blue Label 2006, or Chianti DOCG 2008– the overall scores are fairly high. In fact, 16 products scored over 95 points (Excellent), and nine between 90 and 94 (Very Good). Only 10 products scored between 70 and 79 points (Average), while all the other obtained between 80 and 89 points (Good.)

The Drawing

We drew three feedback forms among all those returned to us with the product evaluations by our esteemed guests, and awarded them the following prizes. Please note that the products awarded are samples not for sale, not yet imported to the US, with the exception of the Lambrusco Emilia IGT and Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil Dauno DOP.